The Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) Armed Forces is the military of the Donetsk People's Republic, formed on 12 November 2014 as the 1st Army Corps. The DPR Armed Forces replaced the Donbass People's Militia, the separatist irregulars who seized control of Donetsk Oblast at the start of the Donbass War in March 2014. Supported by Russian "volunteers" and military equipment, the DPR Armed Forces came to have a strength of 285 tanks, 557 armored combat vehicles, 240 artillery pieces, 171 mortars, and 122 multiple-launch rocket systems by 2019, and it had 35,500 troops in 2017. By June 2022, just four months into the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Britain estimated that the DPR Militia had suffered 55% losses (2,128 killed, 8,897 wounded).